Star Trek Into Darkness

It's Ongoing Mission:
To Explore Strange New Worlds, 
To Seek Out New Life and New Civilizations, 
And to Shamelessly Retread Where the Old Series Has Already Gone Before.
(Oh, and Lens Flares.  Lots of Lens Flares)

I'm disappointed.

The first Star Trek (Beta Two) did a great job of re-imagining the '60's sci-fi mythos of a 23rd century, and dragging it, shouting and flaring and shaking the camera, into the 21st Century.  It shook the faithful, too, reinforced what was great about the series (the characters, frankly) and what wasn't (a little too Hornblower and "Wagon Train to the Stars," too-vintage TV concepts, and the Enterprise corridors always seemed like a circular Ramada Inn). 

The 2009 Star Trek of J.J. Abrams was a game-changer.  It completely exploded (and sometimes imploded) the Star Trek Universe that was starting to harden (the way it did with the Star Wars Universe) with continuity.  That's the way it goes with science fiction series: everything that seemed fresh in the first go-'round, becomes rote and repeatable and formulaic, given a timeline and a structure, and the creativity becomes more about stretching the budget as opposed to stretching the possibilities, or the minds of the audience.  It was ever thus, with "Star Trek."  After its first season and a half, that saw scripts by some of science-fiction's best and brightest, "Star Trek" (the original series) was becoming rote, concentrating on relationships (there was a rotating "crewman-in-love" every week with the exceptions, significantly, of Sulu and Lt. Uhura) and planets that had remarkable resemblances to Earth.  When the movies came along, all of them (including the "Next Generation" movies, which had strictly prohibited the habit in its TV run) settled into the "Khan" pattern of having a central antagonist, rather than dealing with a cosmic crisis or ethical problem dictated by a planet's sociological peculiarities.*

But the Star Trek retro-fit changed the rules.  By altering the Trek timeline, the series could literally "go" anywhere to the "strange new worlds"—or old ones—of the mission statement from the "series bible."  So, for me, it's something of a lost opportunity that the first adventure out of the space-dock is a re-visit, tinkering with a too-obvious choice of what to "fix" and particularly re-writing one of the films to mixed results.

Not that Star Trek Into Darkness isn't fun—let's say that upfront—and never short of entertaining, taking full advantage of the shifted relationships of the Enterprise's new-old complement, but never straying from them that much to incorporate anyone new.  

This crew is more squabbly than the one from the Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley days. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) have an uneasy truce, still getting to know each other, and wondering why they should take a mutual mentor's advice that their alliance is mutually beneficial.  Kirk and Scotty (Simon Pegg, still delightful) are at odds over Kirk's motivations for a trip into Klingon territory and Mr. Scott takes a leave of absence from the crew, briefly, to be replaced by Mr. Chekhov (Anton Yelchin, who is underutilized, and frankly needed the job) as Chief Engineer.  And the unlikely romance between Lt. Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock is going through some warp-turbulence**—seems she thinks Spock is a little too aggressive in doing his duty and passive in accepting death, a nice little argument against the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is further touched on throughout the movie.

Oh, that mission across the Klingon Neutral Zone mentioned earlier is to take out a terrorist, John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch, quite brilliant in this), who seems to be on a personal revenge campaign against Star Fleet, blowing up a London facility, and seeking asylum among the newly imagined bumpy-headed warriors on Kronos.  Kirk is charged by the hawkish Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to find Harrison and fire some specially designed photon torpedoes at him with extreme prejudice.  To say anything more in the way of plot would be to spoil all sorts of little surprises and one big surprise in the film, which would be some sort of violation of the Movie Prime Directive.  I say that with some irony as once things start being revealed, the movie doesn't go off the rails, but rather travels a little too closely on them.  Oh, it has its own spin, and one that makes a shade more sense than ... Damn.  I can't even say that.  Let's merely say that for an alternate universe, this one sure provokes a sense of deja vu.***  For me, it seems a bit like the franchise is playing it very, very safe, which is particularly sad after its terrific (and risky) relaunch.  Not a good sign, especially as Abrams is moving on (to helm the first Disney "Star Wars" film).  

We need to go a bit more boldly next time.

Star Trek Into Darkness is a Matinee.  Dammit, Jim!

* Even Star Trek: First Contact took the brilliant conceit of a collective-mind tribe like the Borg, and created a never-before-seen "Borg Queen" as its antagonist.

** Small trekkie annoyance: Throughout the movie, she calls him "Spock."  Aren't they intimate enough that she can use his first name?  He has one, and the joke in the series was "You couldn't pronounce it."  Okay.  But she's an alien linguist.  So, if anyone could... Oh!  And another thing—at one point Kirk accuses Spock of "throwing me under the bus."   How archaic a reference is that?  Especially considering that seemingly everything floats in this universe.  Go ahead, throw him under a bus, it's going to sail right over him!  Now, if he'd said, "throw me into the warp-core"...heh, that would have been more appropriate. 

 *** Unrelated to those thoughts, but along the same lines: Cumberbatch's villain is the latest in a recent line of what should now be considered a new movie trope—the villain who lets himself be captured, following in the heels of The Joker in The Dark Knight, Loki in The Avengers, and Silva in Skyfall.   Okay, screen-writers, "you just don't get it, do you?"

Margin Call

"When The Music's Over (...And the Band Plays On)"
or
"Momma, There's Wolves in the House"

Margin Call begins like The Company Men and Up in the Air—in the midst of a corporate slaughter—people being fired from jobs they've held a long time.  Cut-backs.  "Generous" severance.  Thanks for your service.  Security will escort you out.

Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) listens to it all, a little stunned, but tentative.  "Uh, listen," he says in the middle of the administering of Last Rights, "I was working on something and I'm not finished yet."  Doesn't matter.  Go to your office.  Empty your desk.  Proprietary information.  Your losing your phone, e-mail, etc.  "No, really..." he says.

Doesn't matter.  He's out.  On the way to the elevator, he runs into two of his turks, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley).  "Am I safe?" asks Seth (as Seth is wont to do).  But Peter walks him to the elevator to tell him how much his mentorship meant to him. Dale cuts him off.  "I know. I was working on something.  They won't let me finish it," says Dale as he hands him a USB drive.  And as the elevator doors shut, he has just enough time to say "Be careful."

Fwump. 

It's the "be careful" that gets everybody's attention.  "He said that?"

Sullivan begs off the traditional drinks for the battle survivors and takes a look at Dale's figures.  Then he sees something.  Digs, does some calculations and then stares at his projections screen.  Over the next twelve hours, the world will go to Hell and he's the only one who sees the gate.

Margin Call is a boardroom thriller about our recent financial crisis, but its played like a mystery story.  Everybody speaks in code.  The night is dark and no one is betraying secrets.  No one knows what's around the corner and everybody's looking behind them for the knife.  Written and directed by J.C. Chandor (Who? This is his first film and it is an impressive debut), it plays out like a conspiracy—it is—and if so much of it didn't anticipate the dawn, one would be tempted to call it a film noir; there is a palpable air of organized evil, built of greed and self-interest, that hangs over the film, for what is being planned is the crime of the century.

The cast is uniformly superb—how could it not be with the likes of Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, and Tucci?—but those performances depend on the great dialog generated by Chandor and the way he presents what should be dry material as drama and intrigue.  These are gangsters in Gucci, cold-blooded, playing the long odds and the fast kill, but instead of "going to the mattresses" they are isolated in fancy cars and well-appointed high-rise board-rooms, their views of the world their actions are affecting armored by safety glass.  There isn't much soul-searching (their businesspeople, so why look in a dry hole?) about what devastation their actions will bring, except for the immediate future and what it will do "for business."  Even then, loyalty to the corporate mantra of "be first, be smarter or cheat" trumps conscience.  That would make a hell of a slogan wouldn't it?

If one could gripe (and there is little to gripe about), one could argue that, if anything, this reverse "Godfather"—where businesspeople are gangsters, rather than gangsters as businesspeople—is heavily romanticized.  There are no "Masters of the Universe" statements coming from these mortgage titans (as one heard from Wall Street bar-recordings on "This American Life," where these mavens crowed about deserving bonuses from bail-outs because "they're smarter than everybody else"), but, rather, short-term hedges about "dog-eat-dog" survival.  No cynical betting against failure schemes, but merely making the best out of a bad situation before everyone else does.  

As bad as Margin Call makes its protagonists, the truth is even worse—there were folks betting on things coming crashing down and profiting from it.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that a fix was in and that analysts saw it coming, not, suddenly, seeing it and going "Garsh, this looks bad."  And the worst thing that's happened to these people is a little traffic congestion on Wall Street.

That is, if they're working at all.

Margin Call is a Full-Price Ticket.

Star Trek (2009)

"See If You Can Do Better"

I got a call from the Captain about 5 o'clock (that'd be 2000 hours for him)on Friday, and when I saw who it was, I called him back and said "I know what this is about."

The Captain is a life-long Trekker. He knows the arcana of "Star Trek" in its canon, that being the television series—both broadcast and syndicated—and film. Plus, he's a little "inside," having drinks with the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry, introducing Patrick Stewart to "Buzz" Aldrin, and calling up Jonathan Frakes the day show creator Gene Roddenberry died to talk about "what it all meant."

The Captain knows from "Trek." So I was particularly interested in his take on "The New Version" of J.J. Abrams, or "Star Trek Begins" (a version of which producer Harve Bennett had proposed away back in the time-space continuum before "Star Trek V"—you know, the Shatner-directed one best forgotten). I'd watched the trailers warily, noting the emphasis on disrobing cadets and slam-bang action (not mutually exclusive), but noting a certain underlying devotion, not entirely slavish, to the original. They weren't trying to re-invent the warp-drive, which was a good thing.

"So..." I said, "what'd ya think?"

"This is the way they should have always done it.." he began.

Yeah. It is.

"Star Trek" is a rollicking world-and-expectations-shattering version of the Gene Roddenberry original, and most niftily, done in a way that fits within its science-fiction-y concepts. The whole movie is its plot-point and one watches in wonder how the deconstruction happens before one's eyes, while simultaneously nodding acquaintance with the tropes, concepts, and characterizations of the original. One gets the feeling of happy ebullience watching a favorite building imploded with the added delight of seeing it rise simultaneously from its own ashes to be sleeker, shinier and un-compromising

Part of it is due to budget. Abrams was given a fat check to re-launch Paramount's key franchise (which it nickeled and dimed into the ground), so the limitations the creators always had to contend with aren't so apparent. The Enterprise corridors no longer look like motel hallways, Engineering isn't a big space with a back-lit perspective painting behind it, and the aliens restricted to stereo-eyed bipeds with varying head-ridges. No, there's a lot of imagineering going on here in the Enterprise's brave new world of industrial-strength space-faring (at one point the new Captain Kirk sprints—of which he does...a lot—through what I swear was a brewery standing in for some section of the Enterprise's inner workings). The creatures have evolved differently* with nonhuman proportions, sometimes tossing out the human baggage entirely. It's a messy universe, but a full one with good ideas and concepts tossed amid the dialogue. It's a "Star Trek" Universe so full of potential, that there's no chance of coming across a creatively bankrupt parallel Earth, although the film manages to do exactly that in its own clever way.

That's the big picture. The question is the actors; the franchise will live or die on how "the New Kids" can portray the old characters. Fortunately, it's where "Star Trek" shines. Everyone will have their favorites—mine are Karl Urban's note-perfect blustering McCoy and Simon Pegg's hyper-driven Scotty—but Chris Pine is a genuine find for Captain James Tiberius Kirk, employing none of the Shatnerisms (well, there's one deliberate vocal steal that made me laugh), but supplying the one thing that Shatner always brought to the table—energy. John Cho's Sulu is terrific and it's a hoot to see Russian actor Anton Yelchin employing the wretched "wessels" accent of the original Chekov. Zoe Saldana is given much more to do as Lt. Uhura, and given that he had Leonard Nimoy on-set for inspiration, Zachary Quinto might have taken the easy way out with a direct imitation, but his Mr. Spock is far less serene, more volatile and haughty, betraying that human half far more subtly than Nimoy did—and I believe saying that might be a court-martial offense in my house.

Where the other "Trek" movies have fallen down have been the secondary characters, but here they're just as important—Ben Cross and Winona Ryder play the star-crossed parents of Spock, while Bruce Greenwood is a superb Captain Christopher Pike. And Eric Bana, who can be on or off depending on the movie, is terrific as the long-suffering, revenge-driven Romulan Nero.

There will be a lot of sniping from the "Trekkies" who want things their way, or no way—that's to be expected with any "Trek" movie. But in the words of the former Captain Kirk: "Get a life."

Star Trek" certainly got a new one.

"Star Trek" is a Full-Price Ticket.

* There is a wickedly funny bar scene where Kirk tries to pick up the comely Lt. Uhura, while between them sits an alien seemingly modeled on the "Spitting Image" version of Leonard Nimoy, when it suddenly dawned on me what it was doing there: "Why the long face?"